Many of us are very competitive. A few of us want to “crush” our competition. The competitor who is really dangerous does not want to crush you. He simply works daily on making his business the best that it can be, and always strives to be the best that he can be (scary). If your competitors were all trying to be the best that they could be — I assure you that you would be out of business tomorrow.
In some ways, we will never be able to compete with others. If someone is a master musician, and we are tone deaf, we can not compete. We can study music and perhaps improve, but we will never be Horowitz no matter what. So, rather than being disappointed, we should work hard at what we do in a way that has potential to achieve greatness. And we can also work on skills that we have which we will never reach greatness in. The main point is to try to be the best that you are, and not to be disappointed or happy when you measure yourself up to others. Remember — attachment to where you stand relative to others is a sure recipe for misery: The Taiwanese prove this point perfectly.
The Taiwan paradox: No matter how many millions they have, they always mention some other guy — also generally named Mr. Lin (30% of Taiwanese are named Lin) who has more money than they do. If Mr. Li has 2 million, then he looks to Mr. Lin who has 3 million and feels jealousy. Then after more hard work Mr. Li has 3 million, but then Mr. Wang has 4 million — and Mr. Li just can not be happy.
Toyota corporation has the concept of “Kai-Zen”. A Japanese term for constant improvement. Every day, they find something that they can do better. Exciting if you ask me. Many others are constantly trying to find new ways to refine every aspect of what they do every day. You know you are dead when you give up trying to evolve. The cave men stopped evolving and they died off which is proof that you must always try to evolve and always try to be the best version of you that you can be.
On a more satirical note — if you don’t like yourself — then you can try to be the best “aversion” of you that you can be!
Personally for me, I strive to be the “Jeremy P360L 2014 model with extra RAM” — that is the best version of me that I can think of at this point in my evolution.
To sum it up: Don’t be a cave man — EVOLVE!
Can I just say what a comfort to discover a person that genuinely
knows what they’re talking about over the internet. You definitely understand how to bring a problem to light and make it important. A lot more people should look at this and understand this side of the story. It’s surprising you are not more popular because you most
certainly possess the gift.